Mr. Clegg, labouring under the disadvantage of a cold caught the previous afternoon, to which any huskiness of voice might be attributed, obeyed the summons. He was presented duly to Mr. Aspinall, and much to that gentleman’s surprise, was invited to take a seat.
“Absolutely invited to take a seat!” as he afterwards recounted in indignation to a friend; “these Whigs have no respect for a gentleman’s feelings.”
Nor had Jabez. He was pale enough when he entered, but his face flushed, his lips compressed, and the scar on his brow showed vividly, as Mr. Aspinall drew forth a roll of crisp bank-notes from his pocket-book, and loftily offered to him the reward he had “earned by his bravery.”
He flushed, put back the notes with a movement of his hand, and said, coldly: “You owe me nothing, sir. The meanest creature on God’s earth should have freely such service as I rendered to your son. I cannot set a price on life.”
“But I offered the reward, and the fact is, I must discharge the debt. Reconsider, young man, it is a large sum: many a man starts the world with less.”
“A large sum to pay for your son’s life, or for mine, sir?” interrogated Jabez, drawing himself up stiffly; adding, without waiting for reply, “I do not sell such service, sir. You owe me nothing. Let your son thank Miss Ashton for his life; he is her debtor, not mine.”
The words seemed to rasp over a nutmeg-grater, they came so hoarsely, as did his request for leave to withdraw; and he closed the door on the five hundred pounds, and on the smiles of husband and wife, before the rebuffed cotton merchant could master his indignation to reply.
The notes in his palm were light enough, but lying there they represented liberality contemned; a debt unpaid; an undischarged obligation to an inferior; and not thrice their value in gold could have pressed so heavily on Mr. Aspinall as that last consideration. The frigid manner of Jabez he construed into Radical impudence; he resented the salesman’s repudiation of reward as a personal affront, and did not scruple to express his views openly, then and there, winding up with a question which startled his interlocutors.
“What did the singular young man mean by his reference to Miss Ashton?”
Had they followed the “singular young man” across the hall to the sanctuary of his own sitting-room, seen him dash himself down into a chair, and bury his head in his hands on the table with unutterable anguish on his face, and heard burst from his lips—more as a groan than embodied thought—“Oh, Augusta, adored Augusta, what a presumptuous madman I have been!”—they would but have had half the answer. But had they mounted the polished oaken stairs to the dainty chamber where Augusta Ashton lay in bed with a “cruel headache,” brought on by the fright, and eyes red with weeping at the catastrophe which had befallen her adorable admirer, the gallant lieutenant, and heard her half-audible lamentations, the answer might have been complete.